The agricultural sector, she said, had experienced increasing job losses and employment had declined at an average of about 5% per quarter – leaving a total of 598 000 jobs in agriculture by June, according to Statistics SA.

But she believed that by improving the competitiveness of the commercial sector and supporting smallholders to become commercially viable, South Africa would be able to overcome challenges of an increasingly concentrated sector and an increasingly competitive global market.

She pointed out that her department’s Smallholder Development Support Programme and the Zero Hunger Programme were longer term programmes, aimed at developing markets and comprehensive farmer support.

In those products with a negative trade balance, Joemat-Pettersson said her department was devising an import substitution strategy, with the aim of providing incentives that would encourage local processing of both agricultural and forestry products.

These products are processed agriculture (-R4 billion), forestry (-R8.3bn) and fisheries (R928.11 million).

She said in those products with a positive trade balance (such as unprocessed agricultural products which experienced a positive trade balance of R15.4bn), the strategy would be to diversify the market from South Africa’s current traditional markets to new dynamic markets.